Hee!

Taking a sick day today, as the 37 different viruses that people have brought into the office over the last two weeks have finally had a bit of an effect, and I decided that sleeping through the morning was the best decision. For this reason I have just been watching the press conference that followed the AUKMIN meeting between Kevin Rudd and William Hague and their defence ministers. Kevin made two jokes, which perhaps only astute Kevin watchers would have picked as jokes (poor old Liam Fox missed the 1788 one entirely), but the funniest thing has been the surtitling.

Across the bottom of the screen during these sorts of events a little box comes up summarising the comments of the speaker. For William Hague, the UK Foreign Minister, the boxes came up very quickly after his first couple of sentences, such as:
Hague: it's important for our governments to work closely together

For Kevin, with his speech patterns that start by outlining the terms of his comment and then providing factual backgrounds for his statements before making the actual statement within clearly stated limits as to how his answer should be interpreted, the boxes usually came up just before he finished speaking and in the case of his last answer, which had many layers of programmatic specificity, they just gave up and cut back to the news.

It's a constant source of joy to hear his High Cardigan Speak -- and actually less annoying than Hague's speaking style, whoever told him to punch one or two key words in a sentence should rethink their advice quickly, because he has been striking knockout blows on each one. Kevin's opening up the floor to questions was the funniest part of all, though: 'I understand the People's Collective of Journalists has agreed on half a dozen questions, so could I ask them to spontaneously raise their hands?'

Hee!

Taking a sick day today, as the 37 different viruses that people have brought into the office over the last two weeks have finally had a bit of an effect, and I decided that sleeping through the morning was the best decision. For this reason I have just been watching the press conference that followed the AUKMIN meeting between Kevin Rudd and William Hague and their defence ministers. Kevin made two jokes, which perhaps only astute Kevin watchers would have picked as jokes (poor old Liam Fox missed the 1788 one entirely), but the funniest thing has been the surtitling.

Across the bottom of the screen during these sorts of events a little box comes up summarising the comments of the speaker. For William Hague, the UK Foreign Minister, the boxes came up very quickly after his first couple of sentences, such as:
Hague: it's important for our governments to work closely together

For Kevin, with his speech patterns that start by outlining the terms of his comment and then providing factual backgrounds for his statements before making the actual statement within clearly stated limits as to how his answer should be interpreted, the boxes usually came up just before he finished speaking and in the case of his last answer, which had many layers of programmatic specificity, they just gave up and cut back to the news.

It's a constant source of joy to hear his High Cardigan Speak -- and actually less annoying than Hague's speaking style, whoever told him to punch one or two key words in a sentence should rethink their advice quickly, because he has been striking knockout blows on each one. Kevin's opening up the floor to questions was the funniest part of all, though: 'I understand the People's Collective of Journalists has agreed on half a dozen questions, so could I ask them to spontaneously raise their hands?'